On Tuesday November 12 the maintenance crew on night duty at Ben Hokum & Son Limited (Hokums) mill discovered a fire in the chipping plant and raised the alarm at 6:05 p.m. The call was quickly upgraded to a structure fire and a total of eight trucks from North Algona Wilberforce (NAW) and Killaloe Hagarty Richards (KHR) responded to fight the blaze until 1:30 a.m. said Kevin Champ, NAW Fire Chief. Two firefighters remained on the scene over night because of concern for trapped fire under the steel sheeting. NAW fire crews returned with heavy equipment for five hours on Wednesday morning to ensure any hot spots were completely extinguished. There were no injuries and the chipping plant was completely destroyed.
Mill owner Dean Felhaber told The Current, “We have to praise the firemen. We had three fire stations that came to the fire. We’re in North Algona Wilberforce so our closest station is Golden Lake. They called in the Rankin Station as well and they called mutual aid so Killaloe Hagarty Richards responded. There were a lot of firemen here and they did an amazing job. It was really cold. The wind was really bad coming in from the west and it really fuelled the flames. They did a good job at trying to control the fire as best they could with those conditions. Luckily nobody was injured while they were fighting the fire and no employees were impacted.”
Champ explained the first firefighter on scene acted quickly to call in additional assistance, saying 17 NAW firefighters attended with, he believes, 8 KHR firefighters. The incident commander was Captain Doug Buckwald. Because the building was already falling in, the fire crews made no entry and worked from outside. They had access to the Hokums pond but had to keep their hoses open in order to prevent freezing. High winds from the west pushed the fire down the building but the firefighters succeeded in containing the fire to the chipping plant only and stopped it at the point where it interconnected to a sorting shed.
Champ acknowledged the Renfrew County paramedics who were there on standby as the fire crews worked, and he thanked the spouses of crew members who came out with soup, sandwiches and coffee to “keep the guys going,” in particular Lori Brown and Pam Buckwald during the night, and Wendy Kilby on Wednesday morning.
NAW Fire Department had conducted a training day at Ben Hokums a couple of years ago which meant that the crews knew specifically how best to approach an incident at the mill, said Champ. The cause of the fire is being investigated and Champ said they await the report.
Felhaber explained that Hokums needs to replace the chipping plant. “[It] is important to us so that we can chip our low quality logs that are no good for lumber production and get rid of them. But we only use the chipping plant very sporadically, a couple of times per year, so there’s going to be zero impact to our employee levels and zero impact to our customers.” He recalled the last time they ran the chipping plant was for a week in early July.
After the fire (all photos Dean Felhaber)
What a great place we live in to have these normal folks turn up and fight a fire like that in those conditions and obviously a family is involved for a family fire fighter and I might ad all there training work NO injuries Well done very proud of all of you .